WALENTY ANDRUSZKIEWICZ

Borkowice, 8 April 1949. At 10:00 AM, I, officer Władysław [illegible] from the Citizens’ Militia station in Borkowice, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the significance of the oath [and of] the right [to] refuse testimony for reasons listed in Article 104 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, [as well as of] the criminal liability for making false declarations in accordance with Article 140 of the Penal Code, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:


Name and surname Walenty Andruszkiewicz
Parents’ names Antoni and Franciszka
Age 50
Year of birth 1900
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Occupation farmer
Place of residence Village of Borkowice, Borkowice commune, Końskie district
Relationship to the parties none

On 11 April 1940, at 3:00 in the morning, they [Gestapo officers] approached from the direction of the forest, divided into columns, and began to surround the villages of Hucisko Borkowieckie and [Hucisko] Chlewickie. The Gestapo officers, who arrived in Furmanów, near Niekłań, from Końskie, got off the cars there; they had machine guns and grenades, and they approached Hucisko. They surrounded the village and began to fire machine-gun salvos, [a simultaneous discharge of multiple weapons] shooting those [who were] escaping. It was then that they started to set both villages on fire. They drove women and children out of the houses to a place near the forest; they brought captured men in front of Władysław Kudwier’s house and began taking down their names, while a different Gestapo unit dug a pit. Having taken down the names of those captured, the Germans took them – a group of 22 [men] – to where the pit had been dug and told them to turn so that their backs faced the firing squad. Then they fired a salvo at the men kneeling over the pit, wounding them wherever the bullets hit. They threw the wounded ones down into the pit and hurled grenades at them. After this disgraceful act, they covered the pit with earth [and then] danced [on it] in order to tamp the ground down.

At this point, the report was concluded and read out before signing.